Interel India Report: The Personal Data Protection Bill, 2018

The sudden growth of technology and digital services has necessitated the need for Data – its access, collection and aggregation. With 456 million users of mobile internet services, India has been at the forefront of adoption of digital technology.

This fast pace of adoption, especially in the last four to five years has led to increased apprehension and deliberation by both the government and civil society to build adequate data protection measures for the citizens of the country. The data breach at some of the financial institutions and the debate around Cambridge Analytica further necessitated the need for a framework of adequate data protection policy in the country.

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) in July of last year announced the formation of a Committee under Justice BN Srikrishna, a former judge of the Supreme Court of India. The committee took a year to draft the framework and the Bill which was submitted to the Honorable Union Minister for Electronics and IT, Law and Justice, Shri Ravi Shankar Prasad on July 27, 2018.

The Personal Data Protection Bill has attracted divergent opinions from various sections of the society; business, media and the civil society. The draft Bill has kept the citizen at the center for all negotiations with respect to the processing of their personal data. It gives them greater consideration, more than it does to the interests of the businesses and entities which collect and process their data.

This paper by Interel India highlights some of the key recommendations made by the proposed Bill, its likely impact on the digital and data processing entities and the next steps expected on its formal tabling on the floor of the House.